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Dastur Anosh
) |death = allegedly 1766 CE |clan = [[Assamite antitribu|Assamite antitribu]] (Vizier Caste) |generation = 5th |sire = The Weeping Master |childer = |allegiance = Black Hand |rank = The First Seraph }} Dastur Anosh was vital for the formation of the Black Hand as well as the nascent Sabbat. He is a stern enemy of the influence the so-called "True" Black Hand has over the Black Hand. Among others things, he was the developer of the Path of Caine, he was a Cainite so important to the Black Hand that when he suffered the Final Death they felt it necessary to encode his former duties into the identity of the Hand as the title of Seraph. Sabbat historians solemnly note that the Black Hand appoints four Cainites to the Seraph's title, in recognition of Anosh's importance. Biography Records claim that Anosh was born in ancient Persia, of humble origins. He was born with visions, and during his mortal days he was one of the magi who gathered around the Golden One (whom history would know as Zarathustra). He befriended a scribe who was very interested in his visions, especially one about a strange stone that wept blood. He diligently recorded all of the young seer's recollections of the stone. Again and again the young man dreamed of the Weeping Stone, each time with greater clarity and recollection. Eventually they left the company of their peers and sought the Stone. The closer they came to finding it, the more intense Anosh's dreams became. They traveled during the night, sleeping during the day according to the needs of the scholar, which Anosh did not understand, though he did not comment on them. Finally, the pilgrims found the Stone, and the scholar revealed his Cainite nature, Embracing the young seer. They fled, then, bound for the secret citadel of Alamut, his sire's home. In that journey, Anosh found that his dreams had left him, and that he was instead subject to strange visions of grief and pain. At the citadel of the Eagle's Nest, Anosh found a cold welcome. Sequestered in a black cell deep within the fortress, Anosh lost all track of time. Those who brought him his draughts of blood intimated that his master sinned in Embracing him, and that he must answer for those sins. When they were granted the right to leave, he saw that his sire and master was subject to the same strange visions. As they traveled at night, his master spoke with hatred of the Third Generation and their terrible sins and the betrayal of Enoch, Irad, and Zillah. They traveled away from the lands controlled by Alamut, until the night when the three Kindred appeared at the edge of their encampment as the sun set in the west. These three emissaries of Alamut ordered them to return to the Eagle's Nest, but Anosh's master refused. The only reply the emissaries gave were drawn blades, and Anosh hid. The battle was hideous, the kind of carnage that only Kindred of many years can unleash, but in the end only Anosh's master stood. The two then left for Africa and Anosh witnessed how his sire began to lose himself to the visions of grief, often weeping uncontrollable for hours and recklessly Embracing progeny. In one of his rare moments of lucidity, the Weeping Master sorrowfully referred to himself and his childer as the "Lost Tribe of Alamut", never daring to risk returning to that vaunted citadel. By the time they returned to the site of the Weeping Stone and Anosh once again had tasted the blood, he began to understand the burden of his sire more and more and began to record his ravings. Over the next few centuries, the Lost Tribe grew and attracted a small handful of others. As time passed, the Tribe assumed a cultic reverence, with the Weeping Master as their prophet and Anosh as his high priest and interpreter. They built a haven near the Weeping Stone and members of the Lost Tribe guarded the site from others. The years turned him introspective, and Anosh found himself sympathetic to a body of principles similar to the Path of Blood that his master tried unsuccessfully to teach him. Taking the canon of that Path and combining it with the tenets of the beliefs they were developing, Anosh developed one of the first portions of what would later come to be known in the Sabbat as the Path of Caine. Forced to leave their haven because of assailants from Alamut, the Lost Tribe established a hold in the bustling young metropolis of Alexandria. The resources of the city proved useful in the development of the Tribe's strange philosophy. They sought evidence of the Third Generation, first as proof of their existence, and then with a fanatic's zeal and desire to destroy them. It was here that the Lost Tribe found fragments of the Book of Nod and further refined its goal of fighting the dreaded Antediluvians. When attack teams from Alamut managed to capture the Weeping Master, Dastur Anosh became the leader of the Lost Tribe. In his grief, Anosh scattered his followers to the winds, sending them far away for their own safety. He would call upon them in the future, he assured them. In the meantime, they should keep secret their goals and spend their efforts to gather more information on their great enemies, the Third Generation. Then, in the year 139 BCE, Anosh returned to the site of the Weeping Stone, fortifying himself on a taste of its bloody rivulets, and returned to the bosom of the earth, surrendering to grief and torpor. When Anosh awakened, he assumed the identity of a recently embraced neonate, entering Alamut and learned what had happened during this time. Afterwards, he called his followers together, and after ten nights of revelry from the blood of the Weeping Stone, he slaughtered all who had told of the Weeping Stone to lesser Cainites in exchange for temporal power. The survivors were rechristened as the True Lost Tribe, who began to use the black crescent moon as a symbol. The Lost Tribe continued in this way for generations, until the assault upon the Lasombra Antediluvian. Word quickly reached the Lost Tribe from its agents. The Lost Tribe retained its secrecy, but joined with this vestigial Sabbat movement. The vampires of the Blackened Crescent infiltrated these movements, feigning ignorance of one another. They began to use a small sect as cover, called the Black Hand, that acted as a weapon of the Sabbat against the hated Third Generation. By the time the colonization of the New World had begun, Anosh realized that the Lost Tribe was no more. What had been conceived as a disguise for the Tribe had supplanted it. No more were Cainites swearing to uphold the rigors of the Lost Tribe. In fact, those who had even known of its existence made up a smaller and smaller portion of the Black Hand's population. With this in mind, Anosh did what was unthinkable to his brethren of the Lost Tribe. He revealed their existence. In a gathering of the leadership of the Black Hand — including those who would one night be called its Seraphs — Anosh revealed the origins of the Black Crescent, his contributions to the Path of Caine, his personal history, and even the location of the Weeping Stone, all in his notably passionate style of address. But even as the Black Hand rejoiced for this connections to their true roots, the elders of the Sabbat began to question his loyalty. Anosh further recognized new influences within the Black Hand and began to suspect that other powers might be at work. He ventured into the Americas and became fascinated with the native cultures there. From here, he watched carefully. He took command of the Black Hand in the New World himself, carefully watching its members and drawing more from those Cainites newly Embraced from among the natives and settlers of the young domain over those with ties to Europe. In order to find the conspirators that had begun to manipulate his sect, he once again assumed the identity of a mere neonate and infiltrated his own organization, until he learned the terrible truth: his Lost Tribe, who had sworn itself on avenging Zillah and her brothers, had become the pawns of a maniac death cult who worshiped the very beings that he had intended to destroy. A short time afterward, a host of wraiths attacked him and he was forced to flee into the Mexican desert. It has been assumed that Anosh met Final Death in 1766 CE, a short time before the First Sabbat Civil War, but he once again had disguised himself as a neonate, determined to bring the Tal'Mahe'Ra down. Anosh gave up his original identity and the leadership of the Black Hand — two things that weighed him down with responsibility and limited his ability to search effectively for the answers he demanded from the world. In the time since, he has taken on the mantle of multiple Sabbat neonates, often showing up as recent Embraces from various crusades, or claiming a recently destroyed Sabbat vampire as a sire. About half the time, he arranges to find a place in the Black Hand, going through the induction rites thereof and drinking once more from the Weeping Stone. Background Description Anosh is a small man, standing just over five and one-half feet. He dresses in clothing appropriate to his current façade, or goes unseen most of the time. His eyes are deep-set, and his flesh has become the deep, almost-reflective obsidian of truly ancient Assamites. He usually hides his identity through a combination of cosmetics and potent Obfuscate, avoiding the presence of elder Cainites of the sect unless holding them accountable for some transgression. Roleplaying Hints Anosh is quietly intense, with a veneer of unsettling calm. He chooses his words carefully for maximum effect, except when he is speaking on some subject he is passionate about. Then his words are a torrent of pathos, sweeping up those around him in their spell even without the use of Disciplines. Most troubling of all, and truly part of the horror and danger he represents, is his dwindling ability to recall certain specifics of his solitary crusade. Even when he becomes confused as to the end he desires, his passion for it never ceases. In his most lucid moments, he suspects that he is becoming something other than the consciousness he once held in iron thrall to his cause. Despite the bulwark of the Path of Caine, Anosh is terrified that the Beast owns him more than the Man, and his long unlife has a fearsome number of lacunae in its history. Contacts Anosh has carefully cultivated a variety of contacts worldwide who aid him in his various searches and travels. Each knows him as someone different. Character Stats :NOTE: Anosh has access to the Backgrounds marked with an asterisk if he reveals his true identity. References * Category:Assamite Category:Fifth Generation vampires Category:Vampire: The Masquerade character